5 Best Laptop for Cities Skylines (Budget Picks)

Cities Skylines is a very unusual game, and if you’re looking for the best laptop for Cities Skylines, then you’ve landed on the right page.

Cities Skylines is a town/city building simulation game and one of the best city building games that may or may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s an excellent game in itself.

I started playing the game just for fun and later found myself playing this town building game several hours nonstop.

Though it’s not what a traditional video game looks like, but Cities Skylines is a casual yet tactical and intense simulation game to play.

To be completely honest, most town simulation games work on any average computer; however, Cities Skylines demands a bit powerful hardware, and if you want to play the game on a laptop, then you should definitely look for laptops above the $1000-mark for smoother and high-quality gameplay.

Cities Skylines System Requirements

Here are the system requirements for Cities Skylines; however, be rest assured that the laptops mentioned below are par from the recommended specifications, just so that you can enjoy smoother and high-quality gameplay, and play other powerful video games on it too.

The System Requirements for Cities Skylines for Windows, Mac OS and Linux are almost identical. Hence below I’ve mentioned Windows System Requirements and any additional requirements for Mac and Linux are mentioned below that. These are an ideal Cities Skylines Laptop Requirements that I have taken into consideration while creating this list.

Windows System Requirements for Cities Skyline

Minimum Requirements

Recommended Requirements

CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo (3.0GHz) or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (3.2GHz)

Intel Core i5-3470 (3.20GHz) or AMD FX-6300 (3.5Ghz)

RAM

4GB RAM

6GB RAM

Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (512 MB) or ATI Radeon HD 5670 (512 MB)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB) or AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2 GB)

DirectX

DirectX 9.0

DirectX 11.0

Network

Broadband Internet Connection

HDD Space

4GB Space

OS

Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1

Windows 7/8/8.1/10

Mac OS System Requirements for Cities Skylines

Minimum Required OS: OS X 10.9 (64-bit)

Recommended Required OS: OS X 10.10 (64-bit)

Linux System Requirements for Cities Skylines

Minimum Required OS: Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit)

Recommended Required OS: Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit)

Note: Cities Skylines doesn’t support Integrated Intel Graphics in any of the OS, hence you are required to get a laptop with Dedicated Graphics from Nvidia or AMD.

Now, most of the times on the #1 position I suggest a powerful gaming laptop that looks mean; however, for the fact that Cities Skylines is a casual urban planning game, hence a laptop with Casual looks with mean configuration will serve the best.

Acer’s Aspire series is their breadwinner for the brand and Acer sells tons of laptop under the Aspire badge that are priced from $300 all the way up to $1600.

The laptop we’re talking about comes with a very mean configuration and would be more than enough to satisfy Cities Skylines laptop requirements.

It comes with an 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8750H 6-Core CPU that is coupled with powerful Nvidia GTX 1050Ti Mobile GPU.

Coupled with such powerful CPU and GPU configuration; you get an 8GB RAM and a combination of 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD in the laptop. This helps to store your games in SSD, whereas other data in the HDD.

Acer has also included a 15.6” Full HD display with an IPS panel, which means you’ll get great viewing angles along with excellent color output.

Additionally, Acer has also included a backlit keyboard and Windows 10, along with a fingerprint sensor to unlock your laptop with Windows Hello feature.

The only thing you may not like about the Acer Aspire 7 is the plastic built. For a laptop that costs just shy of $1000, you would expect metal paneling. However, the use of plastic construction has helped to keep the price down and offers you a high-value product at an extreme budget price point.

If you’re looking for a slightly better-designed laptop compared to previously mentioned Acer Aspire 7, while still retaining the casual looks, then you to ought to take notice of the Dell G3 3579.

Coming from the latest G-Series Gaming Laptops from Dell, the Dell G3 infuses excellent design philosophy though with a muted look; that most gaming laptop manufacturers prefer.

Inside the hood, the laptop is bit more price efficient than the previously mentioned Acer Aspire 7.

Just like the Acer Aspire 7, Dell G3 579 comes with Intel Core i7-8750H 6-Core CPU along with Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB DDR5 Mobile GPU. However, Dell has also thrown in a 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD coupled with 1TB HDD for a price just under $1000.

This is great if you want a laptop that seems part gaming and part casual with extremely powerful configuration at a very low price.

Just like the previously mentioned laptop, the Dell G3 579 comes with plastic built quality but with solid construction. It has an all-black matte finish with the Dell logo embossed in glossy blue on top.

Once you open the lid, you are greeted with a full-size keyboard with laser-etched blue colored letters, whereas unfortunately the keys aren’t backlit.

You can notice the stylized and boxed WASD keys and a fluorescent colored blue border along the touchpad.

Additionally there’s even carbon fiber like design layout around the keyboard and touchpad area, but in reality, it’s all plastic.

HP isn’t primarily known for developing gaming laptops; however, the brand has been putting out gaming laptops as long as I can remember.

HP puts out multiple gaming laptops under their Pavilion series, whereas they have the OMEN series, which is entirely dedicated to everything gaming, and it surely doesn’t disappoint.

To start with, the HP Omen 15-DC0030NR is the only laptop in our list of best laptop for Cities Skylines that comes with very thin bezels that gives it a premium look and seems more pricier than it really it.

Priced a bit above $1100, the HP Omen 15-DC0030NR packs in powerful hardware that is a complete overkill for playing Cities Skylines, but since you won’t be only playing one game. This laptop is capable of playing most games.

What puts this laptop in another league is because of the 6GB DDR5 Nvidia GTX 1060 Mobile GPU that comes with this laptop. It is league ahead from Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Mobile GPU present in above two laptops and offers better gaming performance overall.

To avoid bottleneck; a powerful GPU like Nvidia GTX 1060 needs to be coupled with a similarly powerful CPU, and HP doesn’t disappoint.

It comes with 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor clocked at 2.2GHz, while with Turbo Boost the frequency range can rise up to 4.1 GHz for faster gaming performance.

Additionally, for the price you get 16GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666MHz and a combination of 128GB SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD for faster and larger storage. However, if you want to improve SSD storage, then you can swap the supplied 128GB SSD with an aftermarket 512GB SSD for an extra $80-90.

To keep things premium, the HP Omen 15-DC0030NR comes built with metal chassis that gives it durability, but still, the laptop weighs around 5.5lbs.

Additionally, for a price of less than $700, you are offered an 8GB DDR4 RAM (clocked at 2400MHz) and 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD that provides a read speed of 3000MB/s and write speed of 1500MB/s.

This means that you will enjoy lighting speed while doing everyday tasks and just around 10-12 seconds of boot up time. Windows 10 Home is preinstalled on this 256GB NVMe SSD.

To enjoy playing Cities Skyline in its best format, you get a 15.6” Full HD screen with IPS display, along with 6.5mm thin bezels on either side and 77% of screen-to-body ratio.

Weighing at around 4.85 lbs, the Asus TUF FX505 has a thickness of 1.02” that is built using MIL-STD-810 military grade construction.

On the design front, the design is mostly similar to the previous generation Asus TUF FX504 laptop that sports aggressive red accents around the laptop and a red-backlit keyboard with accented WASD keys.

Connectivity wise you get a Gigabit Wave 2 Wifi, 1x USB 3.1 port, 1x HDMI 2.0 port, 1x USB 2.0, RJ-45 Jack and SD card reader. However, for a laptop launched in 2019; it is surprising to note that the USB Type-C port is altogether absent on the laptop.

All in all, the Asus TUF FX505 is an ideal laptop if you want to play Cities Skyline to its full potential.

For the past few years, HP has become a front runner when it comes to budget gaming laptops.

Along with its Omen gaming range, HP also produces few budget laptops within its Pavilion range to appeal the masses.

Priced under $700, the HP Pavilion 15-CX0056WM offers a great combination of design, specifications, and price.

For the price mentioned above, you get an Intel Core i5-8300H CPU, which is an ideal processor for budget gamers that compels manufacturers to offer laptops at an inexpensive price point.

Coupled with the processor is an 8GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666MHz, which is faster than most gaming laptops that offer only 2400MHz RAM.

Other than that, where most laptop manufacturers stuff their laptop with a slower 5400RPM hard disk, HP Pavilion 15-CX0056WM comes with a 1TB 7200 RPM, which does offer better performance compared to a 5400RPM Hard Disk; but is still slower compared to a dedicated SSD drive.

Since the prices of SSD have gone low, you can add an additional 250GB M.2 SSD for less than $50.

Though let’s address the elephant in the room, and it’s the Nvidia GTX 1050Ti Mobile graphics card, which is a 4GB DDR5 GPU that is 27% faster compared to Nvidia GTX 660 mentioned in Cities Skyline recommended specifications.

The Nvidia GTX 1050Ti graphics will not only play Cities Skyline well but also most video games launched in 2018. To give you an example, the Nvidia GTX 1050Ti Mobile will play Overwatch at around 60-70 fps at Ultra Settings and 1080p resolution.

Additionally, the HP Pavilion 15-CX0056WM comes with a 15.6” Full HD Screen with IPS and Anti-glare display, along with a full-size green backlit keyboard that is a staple of Pavilion gaming laptops.